


once (or twice)

by thescyfychannel



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, F/M, Kingdomstuck, and he falls in love as hard as ever, and she waits for him to get his shit together, but basically they're the same as they ever are, life in her step and hope in his eyes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 06:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13828779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescyfychannel/pseuds/thescyfychannel
Summary: if she's spring incarnate, what does that make a prince like you?





	once (or twice)

_(what do princes dream of?)_

 

It’s a puzzle you haven’t yet worked out, a riddle you have yet to solve or sort or settle—it sticks in your throat, wraps hands around your bones and rattles them, until you can’t stop it from climbing up your spine and staying there.

 

_(when the answer finally comes, part of you wishes it didn’t.)_

 

* * *

 

She is a goddess: this is no praise or hyperbole on your part, in this day, the divine still walk among you, and she is a goddess, light in her eyes and life in her step, and wherever she walks, she brings the sweetest spring after.

You wonder, wonder, _wonder_ what princes dream of, and then she walks past you, a soft smile, a kind word, no more and no less than she gives to everyone else, and you wonder no more.

Instead: you dream.

 

* * *

 

 

Your kingdom is ice and snow and storms, not suited to her, not suited to all the life she brings. And yet—she settles on it, making her home in the pinewoods you had explored, coming out to tend to the abandoned greenhouses your father preferred to ignore.

“Let her be,” he gives his orders. If his greenhouses are better kept, if he can profit off a goddess’s grace and glory, why not? He’s a pragmatic man—you’re expected to follow in his footsteps.

Instead: you dream. You dream about her, about her sweet smile, about her soft voice, the curve of her lips as she speaks, you dream of her saying your name—

 

—and it startles you entirely, one day, as you end up along the stream-lined route to her little home that’s become something of a temple, that those pretty lips can _swear_.

They swear quite well, in fact. You’ve heard similar on the tips—and on the teeth, and in the talk—of the tongues of the sailors at the docks, who trained you and your brother in seafaring and seafolk themselves. They were some of the first to recognize her for what she was, spring incarnate, a goddess walking the earth and growing it green.

“Uhm,” you say, about as eloquently as you can manage. She glares at you, over top of a pile of plants almost as tall as herself.

“ _What_ ,” says the woman who haunts your dreams nightly. You make your best attempt not to fluster or flush.

From what you can tell, she’s not so much annoyed at _you_ as she is at the fact that a fern or two has fallen off her stack. This makes it all the easier to scoop up the offending piece of foliage, holding them gently. “D’you need help?”

Her expression softens slightly, and she tilts her head to the side—her hair’s long and dark, deepest brown, light catching in its curls as it dances off the water—as she looks you over. “I suppose I might. Are you offering?”

 

It seems that you are. She hands you a few more plants, and a rock, and you’re left struggling not to seem like you’re struggling. You are. She pretends not to notice, as you nearly stumble over an old stepping-stone.

When you arrive at the top of the climb, you find out what she needs all of this greenery for: she’s restoring the greenhouses, little by little by little, grass blades and glass fragments, as she turns them almost inside out. “It’s so warm in here,” you marvel, not even inside the glass itself. There’s almost a sphere of warmth, radiating outward, keeping the air around you temperate enough that you’ve shed your coat and tied your hair back.

“The plants wanted to be warm.” It’s all the answer she seems willing to give you, and somehow, you’re rather satisfied with that. “What do you want to be, Your Highness?”

The question stalls you out, creeps up your spine and freezes down the length of it, and she seems rather satisfied with that. “Pass me the vine, please,” she says, carefully setting pieces of hollow dead wood into the ground. You hand it over, and she begins describing its flowers to you, promising you’ll see them, come the fall.

 

The question sits on the tip of your tongue, and you don’t dare ask it until your third trip up the winding way to her home. You’ve learned to bring something, every time you go—it’s not an offering, as some of your other people bring.

No, you’ve learned that she’ll get so focused on her work that she’ll forget to drink or eat, that she’s been sleeping on moss and leaves, that she weaves wonderfully well, but she doesn’t seem to ever have enough in the way of materials—in short, you’ve learned that she’s…human, almost. In a certain sort of way that makes it easier to talk to her, easier to see her, easier to laugh with and smile at and make jokes of and for her—easier for all of her to wrap hands around your bones and pry your ribcage open.

The question sits on the tip of your tongue, and you don’t dare ask it until she mentions a flower she’s brought up that only blooms in winter. “Will you be here that long?”

You haven’t dared to ask it—haven’t dared to lay your heart so bare, not for a goddess of the spring, there and gone again with the season’s twist and turn.

She blinks at you, once, twice—her eyes dark and deepest brown, as life-filled as the very soil she’s been planting in—then bursts into laughter.

“Oh, _Eridan_ ,” she says, giving you a smile more fond than you ever dared to hope for. “Did you really think I would _go_?”

 

* * *

 

 

_(once upon a time…)_

 

There was a time when you wondered what princes dreamed of, puzzled over a riddle that seemed to have no answer at all and every answer at once. It was easy: old friends, old places, old toys, new games, glory and battle, your kingdom itself. It was hard: a good life, the right way to rule, the best way to protect your people.

It was her: a goddess of springtime, of life and light, who laughed with you and at you, who danced through your woods and your words and your dreams, who enchanted you every night until you spoke to her, and she began to enchant your days as well.

There was a time when you couldn’t sort or settle your fears and your dreams, when you couldn’t solve your riddles and they dogged your steps as you wandered across a kingdom that worried you as much as you worried it. It was easy: you knew your role and how to play it. It was hard: you were ever lonely, ever lost, ever wondering.

And, somehow, even then, it was her: your riddle, your goddess, your queen—something not even a prince or a king could dream up.

 

_(once upon a time, you were a prince, and you didn’t dare to dream.)_

**Author's Note:**

> This was for the 2018 Homestuck Valentine Exchange, for catnipcutie! Happy Valentine's Day!


End file.
